<p>I agree, but I do you think you would get straight A's at Harvard? I know I probably wouldn't (and probably won't at Brown next fall). If these schools were such a cinch (i.e., the courses aren't challenging enough), why are they the top, most respected schools? The only reason anyone is complaining is because it makes them look bad going to _______ University when they are getting a B or C average. The point I am trying to make is that they are still educating their students well, and I don't see it as a huge problem as of now. Hopefully grade inflation will diminish soon, though.</p>
<p>There is a theory that grade inflation began in the Ivys during the Vietnam War era because of the draft. I think another source of pressure to give high grades at the Ivys is because employers and grad school admissions offices don't give sufficient weight to the highly selective nature of the Ivys. They don't take into sufficient account which school the gpa was from, or they are not aware of the differences in student quality. In a way, it does seem unfair in a broader sense to grade Harvard students on the same scale as Podunk students. But it wasn't always that way. The Ivys graded harder in the pre-Vietnam era. Hence, the debate at all the Ivys about grade inflation and honors. Honors is not the same as gpa. Students have to qualify via gpa for honors candidacy and then elect to do an honors thesis which is graded by two or more faculty. There are reasons other than gpa why honors might be more common at one Ivy than another, but percent honors is a rough guage of gpa.</p>
<p>I have more first-hand knowledge about Cornell engineering than other majors or other Ivys. I know the workload is high and grading runs the full range from A to fail at Cornell eng. Multiple choice exams are considered "evil" and students are required to think and write (as at the other Ivys, I believe). The little I have read leads me to think that the administrative position at Cornell is that the proof of a Cornell education is in success after college, not honors or gpa. (This is from an "Uncle Ezra" question...the administration's mystery liason.) I have wondered whether this attitude comes down from the vice-provost for undergraduate education who is a Harvard Summa grad from the pre-Vietnam era. Don't really know.</p>
<p>I think colleges should be required to publish a "difficulty index" like the following:
1. for each grade assigned, also print the percent of A+B grades in that class on the transcript
2. SAT score divided by cumulative gpa (the higher the difficulty score, the harder the school)
3. GRE, MCAT, LSAT, or GMAT national percentile divided by cumulative gpa (higher score means more difficult)</p>
<p>getting back to the original question, my perceived rank the Ivys as follows according to difficulty getting a high gpa (trying also to account for the HYP selectivity)
Cornell (most difficult to get a high gpa)
Dartmouth
U Penn
Princeton
Yale
Brown
Harvard</p>
<p>Columbia would be between U Penn and Princeton</p>
<p>I know this might sound stupid (so forgive me for my ignorance) but what's the big deal if a lot of people get A's? Can someone explain this? I know about how they restirct the number of people allowed to get a certain grade....but WHY? What's wrong with it?</p>
<p>universities get concerned that it demeans the quality of the degree. ("if everyone from ivy university X gets As, then they don't really count as As")</p>
<p>Exactly; if everyone in the class gets an A, then the A doesn't actually mean anything - whereas it should mean "Student performed OVER and ABOVE class expectations". Not, "Student completed all the work satisfactorily" which is what it often means now a days.</p>
<p>As for me, I'm a straight A student, 4.0, never worked for my grade in my life. Going to Princeton next year. Do I expect to get a 4.0? Definitely not. The thing I look forward to most about college is working my butt off to get an A, and only getting a B - and being HAPPY with that B. School is about so much more than grades. You shouldn't have to get an A to feel good; you should be content with the fact that you /learned/ something.</p>
<p>well said. </p>
<p>blablabla (10 characters)</p>
<p>Back to the honors thing...what is the requirement for honors? I thought it was doing extra work with your senior thesis. This would not have any relevance to grade inflation-just students' initiative. Is there a GPA cutoff for graduating with honors? Or does the fact that 91% of H students doing an Honors Thesis make it a joke of a school?</p>
<p>Honors requirements vary from school to school and some schools are changing requirements because honors was too common. Harvard used to base summa and magna mostly on gpa but is changing to a percentage system:
"Until June 2005, Harvard will award honors to students recommended by their concentrations based in most cases on their overall grade point average. Until June 2005, to be awarded the degree magna cum laude, the candidate must have a minimum grade point average of 3.33. To be awarded the degree cum laude in field, the candidate must have a minimum grade point average of 2.83. For a student not recommended for honors by their concentration to be awarded the degree cum laude based solely on overall grade point average, the student must have a minimum grade point average of 3.00. The process of determining the degrees summa cum laude will be the same as described above."</p>
<p>weird thanks</p>
<p>setting the maximum number of A's given out at 35% is still quite high...</p>
<p>I'm waiting to hear about a professor at the Ivies who curves students grades down.</p>
<p>"Exactly; if everyone in the class gets an A, then the A doesn't actually mean anything - whereas it should mean "Student performed OVER and ABOVE class expectations". Not, "Student completed all the work satisfactorily" which is what it often means now a days."</p>
<p>IMHO, the best way to describe it simply, in one word, is "inflation."</p>
<p>"As for me, I'm a straight A student, 4.0, never worked for my grade in my life. Going to Princeton next year. Do I expect to get a 4.0? Definitely not. The thing I look forward to most about college is working my butt off to get an A, and only getting a B - and being HAPPY with that B. School is about so much more than grades. You shouldn't have to get an A to feel good; you should be content with the fact that you /learned/ something."</p>
<p>I am the same way; even without doing my homework, in honors classes I can usually pull off B's, B+'s, and A's on quizzes and tests. </p>
<p>IMHO, the above is a much better indicator of intelligence than grades; it's a double-edged sword in that you might not pull off a 4.0, but it proves some level of intelligence, and sure requires less work. That being said, I am now actually starting to do my homework, as it will raise me to that next level that I should have been at for the entirety of my high school career. (I'm a sophomore in high school atm).</p>
<p>But it's so much fun acing a quiz when you didn't even come close to looking at the reading! ;)</p>